Foreign correspondents — who, by dint of their profession, are obviously a far-flung lot — seem to be stretched particularly thin these days. In the Middle East alone, there are any number of important stories that demand attention: Iraq continues to grind on toward its fourth year of bloody indecision; Hamas and Fatah are fighting for the upper hand in Gaza; Syria and Iran are jockeying for regional supremacy and Lebanon’s government appears on the brink of falling apart.
While the region is no doubt blanketed with reporters, some stories invariably are bound to get lost in the mix. One story that we haven’t seen much about — even as the tensions in Lebanon have forced themselves into the news cycle once again — is what has been going on with the United Nations troops inserted into southern Lebanon after this summer’s fighting between Israel and Hezbollah finally ended.
Into the breach steps friend of CJR David Axe, who was recently dispatched to Lebanon on assignment for the bimonthly magazine Defense Technology International to check in on the U.N. troops.
Before leaving, he wrote at Defensetech.org, where he’ll be intermittently blogging the trip, that “it seems that the U.N. force is at best ineffective and, at worst, an irritant to local Shi’ites. My job is to check out the U.N. forces’ weapons and technology …”
An experienced war reporter with seven trips to Iraq under his belt, it looks like while Axe won’t necessarily be reporting on the politics of the U.N.’s deployment, any hint as to how the force is doing its job would still be interesting — especially since the recent turmoil in Beirut (and Baghdad, and Tehran, and Damascus) has completly overshadowed the presence of the U.N. troops in southern Lebanon, at least in the minds of the American press.
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.